Holocaust Memorial Day

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will come on to talk about education, which is really important in making sure that people are aware. That is why education and an understanding of history matter so much. It is why projects that allow us to capture the testimony and the voices of survivors are so important, too. I visited the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre at Garnethill a while back, and was struck by the huge value of that facility. I encourage anyone who can to visit and increase their own knowledge and understanding. It is a remarkable place.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I am glad my hon. Friend has been to visit the Jewish Archives Centre in my constituency. I encourage everybody to go and visit. Was she as struck as I was, when looking at some of the personal effects of Jewish people—their passports and their personal belongings—at just how quickly things can change and how quickly hate can rise? There is still so much we have to learn about how to stop and prevent that.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. We all need to reflect on that. We have a responsibility to recognise hate when we see it. We have that responsibility to call it out, because things can change very quickly.

That point connects to education, which the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) also spoke about. Educational visits are very important. Many young Scottish people now visit Auschwitz, including the group accompanied by Nicola Sturgeon, our First Minister. Such visits are vital in making sure that there is no doubt, no denial, and no loss of the focus on what happened.

There are others, too, working on that and making a great impression on those around them with their focus and their drive to ensure we have a full understanding of the horror of the holocaust and how it came about. The work of impressive young Scottish women like Danielle Bett and Kirsty Robson mean those coming after us will know and will remember.

When I was in this place in a previous parliamentary Session, I was very fortunate to visit Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Memorial Centre. I will never forget that and I am sure that nobody who visits ever does. It was the little things that stood out and affected me profoundly. Seeing the photos and the names, the people who were killed were not just numbers—although they amount to more than the entire population of Scotland—but people just like you and me. They were ordinary people torn from their everyday lives into unimaginable horror.

It was the everyday things. I lost my own mum just before I visited Yad Vashem. I was utterly shattered to see on display a pair of glasses that someone had kept, which had belonged to their mum who had died in a concentration camp. She had kept her mum’s old broken glasses with her, and had kept them on her person until the end of her own life, because they were all she had of her. These wee things are the big thing, in a way, because they remind us that this is about all those individual people wiped away by the holocaust. All those people.

It is worth remembering that Holocaust Remembrance Day and Burns night fall just about together. I think Burns could speak for all of us here today when he said:

“Man’s inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn!”

Burns was very big on solidarity, too:

“Man to Man, the world o’er,

Shall brothers be for a’ that.”

That is all about standing together. That focus on standing together and standing up for what is right is very important in my local community, and our public representatives of all political colours recognise that.

Today, if this debate had not been taking place, I would have been at the funeral of a woman very focused on standing up for everyone in our local community. I am sure that hon. Members will join me in remembering the life of Liz Carmichael, the wife of former East Renfrewshire provost, Alastair Carmichael, who worked very hard on holocaust memorial during his time in office.

That focus on others was also a guiding light in the life of Jane Haining, who hailed from Dunscore but died in Auschwitz when she refused to allow the pupils that she taught at a school in Budapest to be sent there alone—she insisted on going with them. Her dedication to those children—her commitment to standing together—is a lesson for all of us. When she wrote of her decision to be with the children, she said:

“If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness?”

There is an increasing need now for us to recognise that darkness and to live our lives with Jane Haining’s spirit of compassion and solidarity. We need to stand together and be relentless in our commitment to doing so.